Conventionally, in stores such as supermarkets and convenience stores, money handling systems for performing giving and receiving of money regarding the prices of commodities have been used when commodity transaction is performed. For example, Patent Literature 1 discloses a settlement system including a POS (Point of Sale) register configured to calculate the total amount of the prices of commodities a customer has purchased, and a cash settlement apparatus configured to perform inputting of deposited money received for the commodity prices from the customer, and dispensing of change.
A barcode reader is connected to the POS register. The barcode reader reads barcodes assigned to the respective commodities, and recognizes the prices of the respective commodities by referring to commodity information managed by a POS server, whereby the total amount of the prices of the commodities is calculated. The cash settlement apparatus is a money handling apparatus capable of performing money depositing and dispensing processes, and has a function of depositing and dispensing money while recognizing and counting the money, and a function of receiving, from the POS register, the total amount of the prices of the commodities the customer has purchased. Specifically, the cash settlement apparatus is configured to perform: a depositing process of recognizing and counting deposited money from a customer, and storing the deposited money therein; and a dispensing process of dispensing change, according to need, on the basis of the total amount of the deposited money and the total amount of the prices of the commodities.
In a store, the POS register and the cash settlement apparatus are located at a checkout counter in a checkout area where checkout regarding commodity transaction is performed. As a mode of installation of a POS register and a cash settlement apparatus, the POS register and the cash settlement apparatus may be incorporated in a register lane, and a cashier may perform a work of reading barcodes assigned to commodities, receive deposited money from a customer, and pay change. In another mode, only the POS register may be incorporated in the register lane, and the cash settlement apparatus may be located in a place apart from the register lane. In this case, the cashier at the register lane performs only the work of reading the barcodes assigned to the commodities by using the POS register, and after the total amount of the prices of the commodities is calculated, the customer, who has moved from the register lane to the place where the cash settlement apparatus is located, pays cash and receives change by themselves. Besides, there is a mode called “self-checkout” in which the customer performs all the works of reading the barcodes assigned to the commodities, paying cash, and receiving change by themselves.
It is possible to suppress occurrence of artificial mistakes and strictly manage cash by performing, using the settlement system, the processes regarding giving and receiving of cash, such as the process of recognizing the prices of commodities to calculate the total amount thereof, the process of recognizing and counting cash received as deposited money to calculate the total amount thereof and storing the deposited money therein, and the process of calculating the amount of change and dispensing the change.